A TOP KHMER ROUGE LEADER, GOING PUBLIC, PLEADS IGNORANCE As Cambodia moves closer to convening a trial for the deaths of 1.7 million people under the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's, one of the movement's top leaders has begun to plead his case publicly, claiming ignorance, innocence, shock and contrition. "I have found it so difficult to believe what people told me of what happened under the Khmer Rouge regime, but today I am very clear that there was genocide," said the leader, Khieu Samphan, 72, in one of a series of interviews he has given reporters in recent days. United Nations experts have been working in Cambodia to prepare the groundwork for an international tribunal after an agreement in principle with the Cambodian government in June. Many political, technical and financial hurdles remain, however, and many analysts doubt the experts' prediction that a trial could begin as early as this year. The Cambodian side has been raising conditions and creating delays since 1996. Serious questions remain over both the political will of the government and the ability of its corrupt and ill-trained court system to play its part in a process that will mix both foreign and local judges and court officers. Nevertheless, the analysts say, the public pleading of Mr. Khieu Samphan, who was the nominal head of the Khmer Rouge government, is a sign that he is feeling the heat. Sok Sam Ouen, executive director of a local legal aid group, the Cambodian Defenders Project, said Mr. Khieu Samphan approached him for advice about three months ago. "He asked me whether or not he has the right to have a lawyer," Mr. Sok Sam Ouen told Agence France-Presse. "He wanted to know whether the organization can help him." Another prominent leader, Nuon Chea, 76, told the English-language Cambodia Daily on Monday that he did not plan to hire a lawyer because his case was too complicated and because he was too poor. "If people have no money, you do not help defend," he said, referring to lawyers. "So where is the justice and ideals to assist the poor people?" Both Mr. Khieu Samphan and Mr. Nuon Chea were interviewed by telephone from Pailin, the former Khmer Rouge stronghold where they have been living quietly, tending to their gardens and grandchildren, since the Khmer Rouge abandoned its jungle insurgency in 1998. The top leader, Pol Pot, died that year, and only a handful of his most culpable henchmen remain alive. None of the Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to trial for the deaths between 1975 and 1979 of as many as one-fourth of the country's people. Under the radical Communist government, Cambodia became a mass labor camp where people were executed or died from torture, starvation, disease and overwork. "I have been wondering, and I am still wondering, why the leaders killed the people like that," Mr. Khieu Samphan said in his Agence France-Presse interview. "I never conspired with any senior Khmer Rouge leaders to kill the He added: "It was so unjust for those people. My mind is still confused." Cambodians and foreign experts scoffed at his pleas and denials, contained in both the interviews and in a long, closely argued open letter in French that he released on Tuesday. "I summarize it as his very long-winded way of saying, `I knew nothing, everything was the responsibility of the maximum leader, and anyway, we did it to save the country,' " said Craig Etcheson, an expert on the Khmer Rouge who is completing books on their crimes and on the legal process. "Which of course was exactly the argument many Nazis used in an attempt to save themselves at Nuremberg," he added, "and it didn't do them any good." In his interviews and letter, Mr. Khieu Samphan said he was shocked to learn of Khmer Rouge crimes from a documentary by a French-Cambodian filmmaker, Rithy Panh, which he said he saw in April. "My mind totally changed after I watched the latest film documentary of Mr. Rithy Panh," he said. "I never believed previously that people were killed when they stole one potato to stay alive." When he surrendered in December 1998, Mr. Khieu Samphan urged Cambodians to "let bygones be bygones." But under pressure from reporters at a news conference, he said he was "sorry, very sorry" for whatever had happened. In 2001 he issued a statement saying he had been shocked to learn from his wife that people had suffered while he headed the Khmer Rouge government. Until now, however, he had not gone so far as to agree with historians who call the killings genocide. |
